The Influence of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Africa

Half a century ago, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted two great covenants, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which brought force of law to the rights declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both covenants have been widely ratified by the vast majority of African States. However, a largely neglected area of study has been assessing the influence of the ICESCR in various parts of the world including Africa. This article assesses the influence of the ICESCR in Africa. It seeks to show how the ICESCR, as interpreted by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has, through the 50 years since its adoption, had influence on the regional and domestic protection of economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights) in Africa. The article begins by considering the influence of the Covenant on the regional protection of human rights in Africa. This is followed by an analysis of the influence of the Covenant on the protection of ESC rights in domestic legal systems in Africa focusing primarily on the constitutional protection of ESC rights. It then considers the limited influence of the Covenant on national courts’ jurisprudence in African States applying dualist and monist approaches to international treaties. It ends by making recommendations to maximize the influence of the ICESCR in the future

The Self-Selection of Democracies into Treaty Design: Insights from International Environmental Agreements

Generally, democratic regime type is positively associated with participating in international environmental agreements. In this context, this study focuses on the legal nature of an agreement, which is linked to audience costs primarily at the domestic level that occur in case of non-compliance and are felt especially by democracies. Eventually, more legalized (\hard-law") treaties make compliance potentially more challenging and democratic leaders may anticipate the corresponding audience costs, which decreases the likelihood that democracies select themselves into such treaties. The empirical implication of our theory follows that environmental agreements with a larger share of democratic members are less likely to be characterized by hard law. This claim is tested using quantitative data on global environmental treaties. The results strongly support our argument, shed new light on the relationship between participation in international agreements and the form of government, and also have implications for the \words-deeds" debate in international environmental policy-making

Law in the virtual battlespace: the Tallin Manual and the Jus in Bello

Reports of cyber operations have increased so dramatically in recent years that they have become commonplace. The reality that most attacks to date have resulted in relatively benign consequences - inconvenience and offence through defacement of government websites and/or temporary suspension of access - only serves to heighten awareness of the damage that could result from much more serious attacks on networks controlling, for example, vital public transport and emergency infrastructure, the financial system and sensitive communications networks. The threat of apocalyptic consequences has galvanized States into proactive cyber defence measures - spawning an entirely new category of bureaucracy that until recently might readily have been cynically dismissed as manipulative fear-mongering to justify yet more human and financial resources allocated to the public sector. That governments should proactively mitigate emergent and potentially catastrophic risks is an a priori notion. Citizens of a State whose government did not take cyber defence seriously would be entitled to feel aggrieved - particularly in the aftermath of a serious cyber attack where the lack of proaction on the part of central authorities was exposed. In contrast, expectations should be significantly lower for any proactive clarification of the applicable international law. The making of new, or even the clarification of the content of existing, international law has tended to be more reactive - requiring a major catalyst to expose the need for either clarification or regulation. It has been rare in the history of international law for new development to pre-empt subsequent catastrophe